We have been busy, busy, busy since all the Halloween excitement.  It's about this time of the year that my little ones finally "get it" and we can really start working.  It takes about this long to get our procedures and practicing down pat. 

I consider myself pretty organized (in fact, OCD about the whole thing) but I could not get my math centers managed.  I tried several different ways and nothing seemed to work with my kiddos.  I couldn't figure out how to let them play all the games, they lost pieces, mixed up games, had too many playing the games, you name it.  I couldn't decide if I wanted to group them by levels or give them free choice, And I couldn't remember what to put in all those boxes. 

I finally figured out a system that worked!  I have 15 little darlings (don't be jealous).  so I divided them into groups of 5.  There are 5 centers at each shelf with a colored monster on each box.

They look at the chart each morning to see which shelf they go to.  They can play with the friends that are also at that shelfm  in the space designated for that shelf. Each day I change their names.  I have different levels together so they can help each other and learn from each other.That works best for my little ones.  this way we can keep up with the chaos that seems to come at this time.

As far as remembering what's in each box, I take a picture of the inside of each box and then put them on one page.  Then each year I can remember what to put in them. 

We have been squeezing some Thanksgiving activities in too!
These are our "Thankful" books.  Each child gets a turn to take it home and write and illustrate what their family is thankful for.  They get to share it the next day.  We leave these in our Reading center all year.  At the end of the year after our Publisher's party, I take the books apart and put each child's page in their portfolio.

We also do lots of rewriting stories, poems and songs--making them our own.  They love to read things they have "written".  I wrote a poem for each letter of the alphabet and put it to a familiar tune.(they remeber them better if they are to music).  Then I made a version that gives them some options to make it their own.

I hope to get these up on TPT and Teacher's Notebook during the Thanksgiving Holidays! So check back!

We have been working on our Letters and Sounds book.  Each week we brainstorm things that start with the focus letter.  They draw it and dictate to me.  Some of my little ones are wanting to write the word themselves!

In our rug time we have begun to count by 10's.

And work on patterns.  Whoever is my Calendar Coach for the day gets to choose the correct turkey and make a pattern on his feathers.  They have to explain the pattern to the class before they put it on the calendar.  We get lots of different patterns and it lets them be as simple or complex as their ability lets them.

Last, but not least, for this post, I added the DJ/songleader to my jobs.  Their job is to choose a silly song that we have learned.  They get in the front of the group and lead in the motions and the words.  I usually let them pick 2 or 3. The song cards change out often. This is one of their favorite jobs!